I learned a wonderful lesson, now many years ago, concerning “The Name,” from an old heathen Mochuana.
We were traveling in Bechuanaland; heavy rains, causing swollen rivers, stopped our progress, and we lay for days on the banks of an impassable stream, our only shelter from the inclement weather the old-fashioned bullock wagon. Other travelers by wagons and carts came along; each stopped in turn by the swollen torrent, until quite a little canvas camp lay along the water’s edge.
There was no lack of discomforts of every kind to be endured on that marshy plain. Rain, rain, rain above, and mud, mud, mud below; and whenever the rain stopped, and the warmer air made itself felt, swarms of mosquitoes made the night hideous with their trumpeting’s and their stings. Being limited for time in which to accomplish our journey, the trial of the delay in our onward progress increased the burden of the adverse circumstances in which we were placed, but there was a “needs be” for our being led to, and kept in that precise spot.
Worse than all other trials; than the enforced imprisonment in the narrow confines of that wagon, than the inability to cook or prepare a palatable meal, than the going for nights without rest on account of the onslaughts of the mosquitoes, was the fact that we were subjected to the horrible sights and sounds caused by the existence in our near neighborhood of one of those curses―which in those days invariably followed in the wake of British occupation of a new territory―the wayside canteen.
Close to the drift of the river, on the main road which all wagons going to and from Kimberley with wood or produce from the interior must travel, lay this horrible den, this trap for unwary passers-by; and there the natives of the surrounding districts by hundreds had lost their all. The wagons and cattle, goats and sheep, which it had taken some of the poor creatures their lifetime to collect, were gone in a few months into the grasp of the rapacious trader, who thus throve and amassed wealth by draining the very essentials of life from the poor besotted beings who yielded all up in exchange for the vile adulterated compounds with which he robbed them of their senses, and made them from their “first drunk” helpless victims to be fleeced at his will, pliable dupes for his cupidity to fatten on.
He told me himself, in reply to my pleading with him to give up the iniquitous traffic: “I came here almost penniless, a few years ago, and now I have gained possession of all these acres. All the land you see to that far outlying beacon is mine, and all these flocks and herds, these buildings and gardens, and you coolly asked me to give up the trade that has brought me all this wealth. No! the interest of my wife and children are to be considered in the question.” All remonstrance and pleading were vain. The proprietor of this money-making, death-dealing concern was not to be moved, and I had to witness, during those days of storm and rain, numbers of fellow men going backwards and forwards between those wagons and that door of ruin; old men, young men, here and there a white man, but mostly black men-the ignorant natives of the country, ragged, wretched, besotted.
Again and again my soul, in an agony too deep for articulate prayer, cried out to God, as those staggering figures, with brutalized faces, screaming out as only drunken savages can scream, passed in and out of that canteen door; every now and then English oaths picked up in Kimberley, intermingled with their native language, making this horrible picture of what European civilization brings to the savage races still more horrible. One felt suffocated with the pain, the shame of it all, and oh, so powerless, so helpless to do anything to stay the curse, to save those wretched lives from the destruction going on before one’s gaze hour after hour. My brain felt on fire, as it were, and I cried in an almost despairing agony to God, and then a calm came over me and a prayer; and with the prayer a call. I clambered out of the wagon and went toward the canteen.
Of all the figures there, I seemed to see only one, a poor aged man, with a few filthy rags only very partially covering his equally filthy body, loathsome with sores, his bloated face and bleared eyes, so repulsive-looking that one shrank instinctively from the sight.
He was just staggering towards the canteen to get another drink, when I went up to him and said, “Old man, I want to speak to you.” He turned round stupidly and gave assent. “Come aside a little.”
He followed me back to my wagon, and there in broken “taal,” which I could speak and he understood a little of, I asked him why he was killing himself with this drink. “Why?” he answered, “why, you know why—because I can’t help it!”
I said, “But you can help it; you need not go on drinking.”
“What!” said he, “do you think any man would be so foolish as to go on taking that stuff, that ‘brandt’ (literally, burning), if he could help it, if he could stop from it? No, no! You English know that well enough, therefore you bring this ‘toer goed’ (literally, magic potion, wit’s stuff) to us. You know when we once taste it we can never be free again, never, never! It was so with me. For months after that canteen was opened I never went near it. I saw how it diseased my neighbors; how they went mad after they had been there; how they gave their cattle and their sheep to the white man there, just to get a bottle with that stuff in it; how they could not rest when that was done, but had to get more and more, till everything they had was given to the white man; and their bodies were sick and full of sores, like mine is today, and their eyes got blind, and their hands could not carry the food to their mouths without spilling it; and yet one day I let a mate talk me over to taste the white man’s magic.
“I thought I would only taste a little drop, just to see what it was like; and that is five years ago, and―well you know how it is when you drink the white man’s magic. You never leave off again. I drank and drank. I drank that time till I drank out all the money I had by me; then I went home and brought a goat to the canteen man, and sold it for the drink, and my wife cried when she saw that I had also come under the spell of the white man’s stuff; but it was no use; I was miserable too, but I could not stop; and I drank more and more. I drank out all my goats and sheep and cows and my few oxen and wagon — the canteen man has them all―and now I’m sick and half blind, and with all these sores, and I only want to drink, drink!”
“But how do you get the drink if you have no more things to sell to the canteen keeper?”
He chuckled. “Oh, I get it. When all my money is gone the canteen keeper gives me drink till I owe him $5.00. Then he won’t give me anymore, so then I get my brother-in-law to lend me his wagon, and, weak as I am, I gather wood in the veldt, bushes, and bits of wood, till I get a wagon load. Though I am sick, the longing for the drink, when the canteen man won’t give me any more, makes me strong to go on getting the wood together, till I get enough to go to Kimberley to sell it; and my brother-in-law sends someone with me (my wife is with me now) to take 5$ for him for his wagon, and I buy a little brandy in Kimberley, And then bring all the other money, sometimes $15, to the canteen man here, and I drink every day till I drink all the money out. Then he lets me drink after that for another $5; then I have to get more wood. So I live.”
I said, “But you are killing yourself!”
“Yes,” he answered, “I know that; I am almost dying now, I shake all the time, and I can’t be without the drink one day. When my money is gone, and the canteen-keeper won’t give me any more, I cry so that my friends must give me some; but to — day I can get plenty! I have just sold my wood in Kimberley. I can drink! I must go now and drink!” And he wanted to move off.
I pleaded with him then-asked him if he would not try and give up the drink, for his poor wife, for his children, to save himself from dying lie laughed a strange despairing laugh. “You ask, don’t I want to get well? Don’t I want to give my poor wife and children some money to buy food with? Of course I do. What man would not like to be well of this disease? Why do you talk so? You know as well as I do that there is no help for me, that there is no doctor on this earth can cure a man of this witchcraft.”
“There is, there is!” I said, as it rushed over me. “They that be whole need not a physician, but they that are sick.” I told him of that Jesus, that loving One, who healed all the sick who came to Him. As I told him of one and another who had come to that Jesus and been made whole, those bleared eyes seemed strained with eagerness, and he broke in on me almost breathlessly in excitement,” Is it true, is it true, missis? Are you telling me true? Where is this man? Tell me, tell me! Is he in Kimberley? Oh, take me to this doctor, I will give Him all the money for the wood I gather, till he has ten loads or even more, more if He wants it, only take me to Him.”
I told him this doctor asked for no money, wanted no pay, only for people to ask Him to make them well, but here came the difficulty to explain to him how he could ask the unseen Christ. He was quite a heathen; had never had anything to do even with Christianized natives, knew nothing about God but the name as he had heard it in curses in his canteen experience. I asked the Spirit to help me to explain to him the Heavenly Father’s love, and the coming of Christ to live and die for us here, and the saving power of that Christ. But he wanted to see Him. I felt that the records of Christ’s earthly ministry only deepened the sense that that personal contact was necessary; then praying for light, I was led to get the Bible, and turning to Acts 3, told him word for word the story of that man lame from his mother’s womb to whom Peter and John brought the message, “In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, rise up and walk”; and of what came to pass; how that helpless man got that perfect soundness in the presence of all. I told him that same Jesus was with us now, and would heal him if he asked for it. The blessed Spirit carried the message home; that darkened mind drank it in.
At last he said, “Tell me the name.” I told him.
Then he said, “How must I ask Him?” I said, “Just here we can ask Him,” and I knelt down on that wet grass by that wagon side; the old man knelt, too. I can never forget that moment; the sun broke through the clouds, and shed its light upon that poor ragged, besotted old Kaffir, kneeling there, with his face buried in his hands, on the wet ground, seeking deliverance.
In a few broken words, for my heart was almost too full to speak, I asked that God would glorify His child Jesus and show His mighty healing power on this poor life, and then this poor old drunken heathen said himself, “Great Doctor, make me well.”
He rose and asked me again, “What is the Name?”
“Jesus,” I said.
“Jesus, Jesus,” he went away, murmuring to himself.
I lost sight of him amongst the group of wagons, and that afternoon we moved away to a quieter and healthier spot some miles distant. After some days, we returned to that crossing to find the river had subsided sufficiently to permit wagons to pass over. As we approached one of the wagons, a woman came towards me.
“Missis,’ she said, “is it you that spoke to my husband last week? Oh, what did you do that he is healed from that drink?”
“Why!” I said, “did he not tell you?”
“No, he said he did not know if he might speak of it, but, O Missis, he is cured, my husband is cured! He has never been to that canteen again, though he has money 1n his handkerchief still. Yesterday I was afraid he was going. One of his drinking mates came to ask him to go with him to the canteen. He had half a crown, and begged my husband to go with him; he took hold of his arm, and they went half-way over to the canteen. Oh! my heart was sore, but all at once my husband turned round and pulled his arm loose and came back. Oh! he is cured, he is cured!”
Here the man came up, such a transformed face! and with tears of joy he said, “It is all true, Missis, all true what you told me! My wife wants to know, but I did not know if I might tell her.” Evidently he felt so wondrous a power might be too sacred to speak of, and had a dread of its being withdrawn.
“Oh, yes!” I said, “You may tell her all.”
“Then wife,” he said, lowering his voice to an awed whisper, “It’s a Name, just a Name.” Then turning to me, “May I tell the Name?” On my assenting, he breathed rather than uttered the word, “Jesus.” It is impossible to convey in words what was borne in on my soul then. It has lived with me ever since. It has come to me in hours of greatest darkness, and brought light. It has swept through my being in moments of terrible temptation, and again and again when I have been at the point of yielding, it has brought me victory. It has given me hope for the most helplessly lost lives, and the recital of this that took place that day has brought deliverance to numbers. More drink slaves have been set free by telling them of that record in the third chapter of Acts, and this incident which grew out of it, than by any other message which it has been given me to bring to them.
I now feel I must send forth the lesson learned that day on a wider mission, to hearts and lives my voice will never reach. Bothers, sisters, enslaved by drink or any other evil habit or passion, “Try the Name.” It has untold power. That old heathen Mochuana found it able to save, able to deliver, able to give perfect soundness to his poor diseased body, helplessly shattered will power and besotted, degraded soul. “Jesus, just a Name,” so he described it to his wife. He told us that all he had done after leaving me was to say that “Name” to himself, and the craving for the drink went away from him, and he felt just as he did before he had ever tasted the stuff; as he put it, “His mouth felt clean like a little child’s,” and his body was well and strong. Of the day when he allowed the drinking companion by force and argument to get him to go towards the canteen, and so was mentally yielding, he said, “When I was going to the canteen all at once the old disease came back. I felt it burn in me. I wanted the drink. I felt it all over my body; the sickness was on me again. I was so frightened, but just as I was half way to the canteen, there by that bush, I called out softly three times, ‘Jesus! Jesus! Jesus!’ and the disease just left me at once, and my body felt cool, and I turned back, and so, wife, you see it’s just a Name.”
Oh, blessed be God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, “that Name” stands eternal in its saving power. It is for you, for me to lay hold of it. His name, through faith in His Name, has given to every life that trusts it fully that perfect soundness in the presence of all which caused that first glad recipient of its power in Acts 3, after a lifetime of crippled helplessness, to go walking and leaping and praising God; and you dear friend, who are agonizing under the cruel power of drink or some other sinful habit, shall also thus rejoice, and say with the old Mochuana, “It is true, all true, I am healed through the Name.”
S. L.